The Lies of Locke Lamora
★★★★★
This is a story about a gang of thieves led by Locke Lamora and their run-in with an arch brigand who moves in on their city of Camorr. I’d describe this as low fantasy - there are artefacts from a dead elder civilisation and some sorcery, but it’s not a significant factor for the narrative, which mostly centres on heists and con artistry.
The city of Camorr is probably the most well realised fantastical element. There’s some excellent worldbuilding describing the different districts, their rituals, and classes of citizenry - you get a great feel for a rich, working, fantastical Renaissance Venice. It’s not up there with Miéville’s New Crobuzon or Wolfe’s Nessus, but Camorr really engaged me.
It’s an overly long book with a very slow build in the first half as we work through the back story, but it was hard to feel connected to Locke or his gang. One of the reasons is that it’s primarily written in first-person objective, so we get nothing about the inner lives of the characters or their emotions, we just see what they do, and that’s mostly swashbuckling rather than emotional interactions which would help flesh out their character
Unusually nowadays, for a long fantasy book, it’s also mostly Locke’s singular perspective, which again leaves supporting characters much less developed. At the end of each chapter, there’s an interlude for back story or world-building. These were often really enjoyable little vignettes, but I would have liked to see them stop towards the end where they annoyingly broke up the flow of the action-heavy denouement.
All in all, it was a story where I’ll remember the city, but the daring deeds, flat characters, and overcomplicated cons, which all too often seemed to pivot on wardrobe and improvised blagging, really didn’t grip me.
